Rework, possibly Cut List, "You fail X Forever"...

So, What about YouFailLogicForever?

From now on, Circular Reasoning and Strawman Fallacy will be subtropes of Alternative Logic, or something like that, to avoid anyone considering them bad things?

Bizarro Logic would work here, but again, Bizarro X would work for the entire snowclone family.

edited 26th Apr '11 12:02:04 PM by Madrugada

Right, about Alternative Logic. We looked at Bizzaro X earlier. It was thought to be too specifically a way the 'X' is askew. Bizzaro being often used as a synonym for 'opposite'.

edited 16th Nov '10 9:33:15 AM by FastEddie

A quick couple of things:

1. There seems to be an assumption that because the You Fail... tropes are negative, they attract natter. However, this may not be true: look at No Conservation of Energy. There is nothing negative about this trope's title, but speaking as the page's Page Guardian and the guardian for You Fail Physics Forever, both pages attract an equal amount of natter. People just don't like having a "mistake" pointed out about their favorite work and/or (think) they know more about the subject and feel they need to justify or correct it.

2. Why are none of the You Fail... tropes tagged as being under consideration for a rename? There are people (like me) who care about the trope(s) in question but don't religiously check the forums. I didn't even know there was a debate until You Fail Physics Forever was renamed out of the blue.

edited 16th Nov '10 9:47:36 AM by ccoa

@Elle: Except that pages like You Fail Physics Forever even mention how failure's not a problem (but still part of the trope) if it overlaps with Rule of Cool. Additionally, there's notable overlap between the You Fail Physics Forever index and the Art Major Physics index. If we really want this to be the "bad" version, most of the tropes on You Fail Physics Forever would also need to be on Art Major Physics because they often occur as intentional choices. At that point, we'd have two indices with 80%+ overlap just so that we can call all those tropes both "bad" and "acceptable".

Edit: @ccoa: The tagging tech got changed so that tagging happened via threads instead of including pages that had links back to threads. In the process, we lost the ability to flag two dozen or so pages to the same thread.

edited 16th Nov '10 9:46:42 AM by Ironeye

In which case that should be fixed before going forward with this, because (as evidenced by the thread linked as the edit reason for the You Fail renames) finding and/or being aware things on this forum is a full-time job in and of itself. For over a year, it's been impossible to keep up with where and when policy changes and repairs happen around here because you practically have to read every thread on the forum in order to do so.

At the very least, an edit with a comment linking the forum thread would be a work-around and polite to those who launched/are interested in those tropes.

edited 16th Nov '10 9:51:59 AM by ccoa

The thinking is that "No Conservation..." is a complaint, which is why it is catching natter. "Alternative Energy Conservation" is an observation. It will be less likely to spark natter.

That tagging thing does need a solution.

edited 16th Nov '10 9:52:26 AM by FastEddie

How is that a complaint? I'm not seeing it as anything but an observation. (This is not hostile, I'm honestly befuddled)

Accusing something of not having a quality is a complaint. Describing it as different or alternative is just a description.

... That was a joke, yes? Please, please tell me saying "No Conservation of Energy is a negative title because it accuses something of not having a quality" was a bit of self-deprecating humour...

No, seriously. Please. I'm scared.

Anyway, can we at least agree, at this point, that there isn't even remotely any sort of "consensus" on the whole "make everything positive!" issue?

And that, given the problems with tagging articles at risk of being changed, not to mention the earlier thread where this was first discussed, we very likely have not yet heard from everyone we should hear from before any decision is made?

edited 16th Nov '10 10:13:10 AM by girlyboy

YouFailLogicForever can be renamed to simply Logical Fallacies (which is already a redirect). It's just an index listing now anyway.

edited 26th Apr '11 12:03:36 PM by Madrugada

That's assuming that the quality in question has value and requires someone to attach value to a work having "conservation of energy" vs. a work not having it.

For example, No Dog Poop is not a complaint (I think, anyway). Or, a less silly example, I don't think that anyone thinks No Swastikas is either negative or positive. It certainly isn't a natter magnet, anyway (am I the only one amused by the fact that the meta wiki trope I proposed - Natter Magnet - that was squashed by Fast Eddie is now being used informally on the forum even by him?).

Judging by the nature of the natter, my opinion is that it has more to do with armchair physicists (and other disciplines) and obsessive fans, sometimes overlapping and sometimes in conflict, than negativity.

edited 16th Nov '10 10:18:37 AM by ccoa

Yes, a thousand times, yes! It doesn't matter whether you name a trope "Writers Are Fools Who Know Nothing About X And We Should Laugh At Them" or "Harmless, Brilliantly Creative Alternative Non-Standard Ideas About X That Clever Writers Use To Spice Up Their Work". In either case, you'll have exactly the same people coming in to debate just how "alternative," or how much of a "failure," a particular show's ideas about X are, you'll have the same people arguing about which theories regarding X should or should not be mentioned, etc., etc.

I'm sure negative titles don't "help" the issue, but from that to leap to the conclusion that positive titles would help the issue seems like a case of Creative Alternative Imaginary Logic to me.

No, it wasn't a joke. Don't really care if there is a consensus on moving negativity out of the titles or not. It isn't up for a vote, it is an editorial judgment with a supporting argument.

Still haven't heard a compelling argument for negativity.

Not to mention, that the thousands of the current examples are all written with failures in mind.

If the site will be littered with examples like

Alternative Biology: Night At The Museum has an ostrich in the "The Hall of African Mammals".

people will just get the clue that alternative is the new TV Tropes slang for retarded, long before the enties could be replaced with positivity.

Way to show you care about the criticism you receive. The argument coca wasn't there should be negativity but that adding no to a trope title doesn't make it negative.

With all these radical changes in editing rules right after each other, you're just giving yourself more and more reasons to call out anyone for bad editing.

edited 16th Nov '10 10:37:12 AM by EternalSeptember

It Just Bugs Me! that we now have a trope called Physics Goof that lists as an example:

In Star Wars lasers are apparently visible, and move slow enough to be deflected by the reflexes of the Jedi, and also, there are types of lasers that have limited range (lightsabers), nevermind the fact that you can't have a laser that is "this long".

That would be a unessecary Voodoo Shark. People accept laser swords on Rule of Cool.

edited 16th Nov '10 10:45:30 AM by RhymeBeat

^ That should be on Artistic License. The makers of Star Wars didn't make a mistake about the way lasers really work. They created something else that isn't what we call a laser, even though it shares a few characteristics of a real laser.

"No, it wasn't a joke. Don't really care if there is a consensus on moving negativity out of the titles or not. It isn't up for a vote, it is an editorial judgment with a supporting argument.

Still haven't heard a compelling argument for negativity."

You think "no conservation of energy" is a negative title, and this negativity attracts natter. Because of the title. You seriously believe this.

My Head Asplode.

I... I just don't know what to say. Your arguments against negativity make no sense. You place the onus to argue for negativity on everyone else, while completely ignoring criticism of your own arguments against it. You want to make huge, sweeping changes to the wiki, based on dubious reasoning, ignoring opposition from other tropers, and then saying "well prove to me why I shouldn't."

Honestly, I don't see a point to the debate, or even why you feel the need to explain your reasons for making these decisions (especially if you're not going to bother to react to people pointing out that your reasons may not make very much sense)...

edited 16th Nov '10 11:00:19 AM by girlyboy

Still haven't heard an argument in favor of negativity.

Adding No to the title is not a condemnation. "No, I'm sorry." "No, its on the 24th." "No, they seem to be ignoring conservation of energy."

Alternatiiiiiiiiive!!!

Too bad, because there were quite a few listed, starting with the fact that negativity will happen, and you are needlessly criminalizing the entire editor base by changing the rules, that some of the tropes you want to change simply wouldn't work as non-negatives, that negativity isn't actually the thing that attracts natter, etc.

edited 16th Nov '10 11:12:37 AM by EternalSeptember

I haven't heard a sensible argument against it.

But fine, let's see.

1) Making huge changes to the wiki without really, really good reasons is inherently bad to the Wiki as a community, and might result in changes that ultimately prove harmful in the long run. It creates work, confusion, discord in the community, and other problems, in return for what may turn out to be no gain at all. With few exceptions, the onus should be on the person wanting to make the changes to provide reasons for making them, rather than on everyone else to prove why the changes shouldn't be made. So far, the arguments provided for this change have all been challenged and seem pretty questionable, so negativity should stay until stronger arguments come along, or all the major objections are convincingly responded to.

2) While extreme negativity is bad, censoring out even extremely mild negativity (e.g. "X Does Not Work That Way") goes rather far in limiting what can or cannot be written on the wiki. Tropers may become worried that even very mildly negative changes they make might be seen as "too negative," will self-censor, and contribute less. This will discourage reasonable, moderate tropers from making changes to the wiki as much — while tropers who don't care about the rules in the first place will keep spouting negativity. The wiki as a whole suffers in quality as a result.

3) Moderate negativity can be amusing. It can create a playful, fun tone for the wiki, attract constructive criticism and posts, and otherwise make the wiki a more enjoyable place to be. Negativity is not inherently bad, but can be used for entirely positive things, like creating humour, or, when made amusing, showing that something should not be taken as Serious Business. As such, it can be a positive force for the wiki.

4) Allowing mild negativity fits with the wiki's attitude of being "a buttload more informal than wikipedia", and the idea that the wiki shouldn't take itself too seriously. Rigid rules allowing no negativity at all fly in the face of these principles, which have helped make the wiki what it is today.

5) Eliminating all negativity from wiki titles and articles, or even most of it, would create the need to come up with a huge number of new titles under new, artificial constraints. Their quality is very likely to suffer. The discussion in this very thread shows how hard it can be to come up with clear and concise titles that accurately reflect a trope's content when you have to work under the "no negativity!" restriction. The quality of trope names may actually suffer as a result of this limit, even after a lot of time and effort is spent on coming up with alternatives (time and effort that, again, could have been used for something else!)

6) The Trope Renaming Guidelines are there for a reason. The idea of renaming all "negatively named" tropes flies in the face of those rules. Specifically, the guidelines for when not to rename a trope: "It ain't broke." It has not been shown that mildly negative names are a problem, or that changing them would make the wiki better. "The change is not for the community as a whole, but just your own opinion." Fast Eddie's opinion is that mildly negative names are bad, and he doesn't care what the community thinks! "There is no consensus." There sure isn't. "But," one may say, "Fast Eddie can ignore these rules if he wants to!" Of course he can. But should he? These rules exist to help the wiki operate smoothly. Throwing them out the window by fiat may be perfectly allowed for Eddie, but how would the community as a whole feel about it? Wouldn't it take away from the spirit of what a wiki is supposed to be about, at the end of the day? And if there's disagreement as to the change, well, isn't it possible that some people have good reasons for disagreeing? What if this change just makes things worse? Therefore, negativity should be kept, if only because removing it flies in the face of some well-established rules as to major changes in the wiki.

There have been other reasons listed in this thread, including those above.

edited 16th Nov '10 11:19:50 AM by girlyboy

P.S. The first trope I will bring up for a re-name if the "no negativity rule" is upheld: Anvilicious! It's incredibly negative, what, implying that writers would hit their audience over the head with an anvil! It's certainly very unflattering as to authors' ability to make their points in a subtle way... We should rename it to Alternatively Emphasized Morals.

I was shouted down last time I suggested that trope be re-named based on the "If It Ain't Broke" rule and the "No Consenus" rule and what-not, and if those go, I really see no need to keep it!

edited 16th Nov '10 11:43:51 AM by girlyboy